H3N2 Influenza Virus Surges in China, Death Toll Up | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Kevin Hogan in for Tiffany Meyer. Our top story. Health experts around the world are warning of a more aggressive flu season this year. It's a new version of H3N2, a virus China first warned about two months ago. Severe cases and deaths from influenza A nationwide have increased by 40.2 percent, compared with the same period last year over just the past three months. President Trump signs a major 2026 defense bill that restricts U.S. investments in China, seen as a national security risk. We'll break down what it means. Japan is pushing back against speculation it may reconsider its stance on nuclear weapons, even as regional tensions with China continue rising. The United States has approved its largest ever weapons sale to Taiwan. Casey Fleming, CEO of Black Ops Partners, joins Tiffany Meyer at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest 2025 to unpack it all. Health experts around the globe are now warning of a more aggressive flu season this year. The World Health Organization reports that a new version of H3N2, a type of influenza A virus, has become this season's dominant strain. Back in October, Chinese state media citing a local CDC warned that this virus would dominate the flu season. And earlier this month, China's CDC warned that 17 out of 23 provinces are seeing high flu prevalence, while the rest report medium levels. Doctors warned that children are among the most affected groups. Take a look. According to the latest influenza surveillance data released by the Chinese CDC, severe cases and deaths from influenza A nationwide have increased by 40.2%, compared with the same period last year over just the past three months. In children, influenza A can easily lead to serious complications such as pneumonia, myocarditis, and acute encephalitis. Chinese media reported a critical case of an 11-year-old boy in eastern China's Zhejiang province. His symptoms evolved from fever to serious pneumonia in just 24 hours. According to media reports, a CT scan shows half of his lung turned white, indicating heavy infection and impaired function in that area. He was diagnosed with severe pneumonia caused by influenza, complicated by a bacterial infection. Here's what other Chinese citizens are saying. The flu is really bad. Many people around me are getting it. It spreads even faster in schools. At the hospital, you can't even get in line for IV treatment. I got white lung and ended up in the hospital for half a month. There are simply many cases of it. There are many, many patients in the hospitals. A lot of them still have COVID, and now the deaths are mostly young people in their 30s and 40s. We can't predict it. Even a lot of kids are sick. When I look at the virus tests, they carry several viruses at the same time. So it's a co-infection issue, and it's really serious. That's why people think it's especially severe this year. The Chinese Communist Party has a history of covering up the real situation when it comes to public crises. Many signs are suggesting China's flu season may have started much earlier. In late October, Chinese media, citing the local CDC, warned that H3N2 would be the dominant strain this flu season. The report also said that southern China was already seeing surging flu activity, but it assured the public that this strain is not a new virus, so there's no need to worry. In other words, China's official report drew the conclusion roughly two months before the WHO. However, it withheld some key information from the public. This new H3N2 strain has seven mutations and could spread quickly and grow stronger. Then, around early November, Canada and the UK started reporting H3N2 outbreaks in their countries. Just two weeks after those reports became public, the virus broke out across China. A resident from central China's Shanxi province told us that local hospitals were packed by sick people since the beginning of November. Many people were diagnosed with pneumonia. People started wearing masks again. Many elementary schools suspended classes. President Trump has signed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2026 on Thursday. The annual defense bill will place restrictions on capital flow, target communist leadership's wealth, and kick China out of the Pentagon's supply chain. It's seen as a hard-line approach toward China. A big part of it aims to restrict U.S. investments into sectors that could bolster Beijing's military power. It requires American companies and investors to notify the Treasury Department when they plan to invest in sensitive technologies in China. The bill also gives the Treasury Department authority to block deals. And in a blow to the Chinese Communist Party's top leadership, the bill requires the U.S. intelligence chief to publish a report on the wealth of senior CCP officials within a year. Among those in the report, Chinese leader Xi Jinping will also be recorded. A China expert told NTD that he thinks the move is a form of psychological warfare by the U.S. The U.S. aims to expose corruption within the Chinese Communist Party by publicizing the wealth of its top leaders. Washington hopes this will create divisions within the party and show the Chinese public just how much wealth the top leadership has. Publicizing top communist leadership's wealth could deal a huge blow to the Chinese regime. Such information is not available within China and could increase public dissent. Turning back to the defense bill, it also blocks the Pentagon from contracting with Chinese biotech firms tied to the Chinese military. The bill doubles down on removing China from the War Department's supply chains. That's by restricting the DoD from buying a range of items from China, such as critical minerals and advanced batteries. Diplomatically, the defense bill calls for more regional China officers to monitor Beijing's commercial and military activities worldwide. They would also track China's Belt and Road Initiative. It's the country's effort to build ports and highways in developing countries and extend the communist regime's influence. The Pentagon was also directed to strengthen U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific by partnering more closely with Taiwan and the Philippines. And with regards to Taiwan, the defense bill earmarks $1 billion for a program that helps the island defend itself. It also directs the Pentagon to team up with Taiwan to develop and produce drones. U.S. Coast Guards would be sent to train their Taiwanese counterparts to increase the island's deterrence capability. Another provision supports Taiwan's bid to join the International Monetary Fund. It would provide the island with financial protection from China. The latest update on Guan Heng, a Chinese man who recorded footage exposing facilities suspected to be concentration camps in China's Xinjiang region. He's currently on trial over illegal border entry. His trial witness told NTD that the Department of Homeland Security has rolled back the request of deporting him to Uganda. His lawyer has also filed a bail application. The Select Committee on the CCP sent a letter to the DHS last Friday urging for the release of Guan Heng from detention and grant him asylum status. And Japan is pushing back against speculation it may reconsider its It follows reports that a senior security official floated the idea amid growing tensions with China. Japan's chief cabinet secretary reaffirmed the government's position on Friday. Since the end of the war, Japan has consistently contributed to peace and prosperity in the international community, and that position remains unchanged. Furthermore, as the only country to have suffered atomic bombings during wartime, Japan intends to work closely with the international community and advance realistic and practical efforts to maintain and strengthen the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons framework toward realizing a world without nuclear weapons. Still, debate inside Japan appears to be growing. A Reuters investigation in August found rising political and public interest in revisiting the country's three non-nuclear principles. These principles bar Japan from the possession, development, or hosting of nuclear weapons. That shift is being driven by concerns over U.S. security commitments, as well as expanding nuclear threats from China, Russia, and North Korea. According to an East Asian security analyst, Beijing's increasing assertiveness is raising concerns across the region. He adds that cooperation on nuclear between Russia and North Korea is also creating momentum to change Japan's thinking about its national security. The United States has approved its largest ever weapons sale to Taiwan. The deal, worth more than 11 billion dollars, is aimed at bolstering the island's defenses as tensions rise with the Communist Party. CEO of Black Ops Partners Casey Fleming joined NTD's Tiffany Meyer live on Thursday from Turning Point USA's AmericaFest 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona. He discussed the strategic importance of the arms package for Taiwan and the threat posed by the CCP. Take a look. Now I want to talk about Taiwan because the U.S. recently approved that record 11.1 billion dollar package for Taiwan, arms package of course. What is the strategic significance of this and why is a strong military preparedness for Taiwan so important? Because the CCP wants to completely take over Taiwan and it's a massive threat. They've been saying it for years. They've targeted 2027 for that to happen. Look for it potentially at the end of 2026. It's very important for us to strengthen Taiwan as a democratic free world nation so it can't be taken over by China. So strengthening Taiwan is absolutely the way to go. 11 billion dollars is a drop in the bucket in my opinion. Well, given today's geopolitical landscape, if you will, how quickly can China's unrestricted warfare, say economic, cyber, informational, turn into something kinetic? The goal is never to have to go to kinetic. The goal is to weaken them cyber economically, all the different methods before ever going to conventional war. So if they do to go to conventional war, it's to weaken them as much as possible so that it weakens their will to fight and reduces the length of time and the casualties for the Chinese in the war. So honestly, it's a smart strategy. Unrestricted warfare is all methods across a long continuum. The end of the continuum is to win the war without fighting. So the plan is never to go conventional, but they're still working on building up their navy, building up their air force, their army and so on in the event that it ever goes to the conventional side. But don't be surprised if it never goes conventional. And we're, of course, at AmericaFest here at Turning Point USA. Now, Charlie Kirk himself was always unapologetically anti-communist. Now, you've framed this as a battle of good versus evil against the Chinese Communist Party. Why is communism fundamentally incompatible with, say, Western values and the American way of life? Where do I start? So the number one reason is communism is a religion. Most people don't understand that communism is a religion. So if it is a religion, then in communism, you must worship the head of the state, the state and the head of the state. That is the God. And that is the only God. If you believe in communism and worshiping the state, then you are with Satan from a biblical standpoint, just at that highest level, God versus Satan and it's God versus communism. And speaking of help, often people want to know what they can do. I know you have an exciting new book coming out, Red Tsunami. Talk to us about that and maybe the core message you want people to take away. The core message is, if you ever read one book in your lifetime, read this. It's not actually a book. It's a survival guide. I'm not a book guy. So if I wrote a book, it's for a reason. And I wrote that book for God and country. And it actually exposes everything below the surface. If you want to understand what's going on, when COVID hit, everybody felt, and people still feel, the world fell off a cliff. Will somebody stand up and tell me the truth? I do that. I do that based on counterintelligence for the past two decades, working through counterintelligence, working with top counterintelligence and intelligence experts, and then drilling down on each one of those dots and researching them empirically so there's no question on what the truth is. So the book is about the truth. People have wanted the truth since COVID hit. COVID was absolutely a crisis that we never wanted to deal with, and it was all planned. But there's a bigger plan. COVID is just one piece of it. That's biological war. So the one message I want, every person in your family should have this survival guide. I really want to see this survival guide in every high school, every college, every university to undo the communism, the Marxism, the socialism that's been going on for years in our universities. So this gives you no place to run or hide. And I think a lot of people, and this book is not political. This book rides above politics. Well, you hit it first here, folks. But expanding on that, it seems we're all here because we care deeply about America. Now, in practical terms, though, how do we strengthen unity and rebuild national resilience without, say, ignoring real threats? Number one, stay educated. The book helps with that, survival guide. Secondly, stop buying anything from China. Why do you want to fund the enemy who is killing you and your children? Why would you want to put a dime in that? You want to be educated. So the book tells you, the survival guide tells you where to spend your money, where you're not funding the Chinese Communist Party, who is ending you and your family. On that note, Casey Fleming, as always, thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure to be here. Coming up, Chinese-owned app TikTok has signed a deal to sell most of its U.S. operations to a group of American investors. Did the move finally address national security concerns? More on that after the break here on China in Focus. Welcome back to China in Focus. I'm Kevin Hogan. Now the latest on the months-long TikTok saga. The company has signed a deal to sell most of its U.S. assets to a group of American investors. TikTok CEO shared the news with employees in a memo on Thursday. Here's the report. Social media giant TikTok is selling just over 80 percent of its U.S. assets in a move to avoid a ban in the country. Chinese owner ByteDance said Thursday that it had signed binding agreements with three major investors, Oracle, Silverlake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. The deal will create a new U.S. company called TikTok USDS Joint Venture. ByteDance will retain a stake of just under 20 percent. The move is a big step to end years of worry about TikTok's future in the U.S. It had faced a ban from January this year under a law requiring it to divest its assets in the country over national security concerns. Donald Trump also tried to ban the app during his first term but later became a fan, crediting it with helping him win last year's election. He opted to delay the January ban upon taking office this year. The deal's details align with a plan unveiled in September. Hong Kong media mogul and pro-democracy advocate Jimmy Lai was found guilty earlier this week of undermining China's national security. For more on the conviction, I spoke to Frances Hui, policy and advocacy coordinator at the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. A U.S. citizen, Hui has been placed on Hong Kong's bounty list for her pro-freedom activities in the city. Thank you for joining us, Frances. A colleague at your foundation describes this case as an act of legal subversion. What does this conviction mean for Hong Kong? The verdict is pretty much expected by many people who have been following this case. We have seen a whole destruction of rule of law throughout this whole process of the trial. First of all, the trial was heard by three hand-picked judges and without no jury, and those people are politically appointed by Beijing. And during the trial, Jimmy Lai was told multiple times not to talk about his political opinions. In the verdict and the judgment, it's like 800-something pages long. It was so long, I've never seen this lengthy judgment that comes from Hong Kong court. But for this whole judgment, you can see that they're trying so much to paint that Jimmy Lai is the mastermind of the movement, that he coordinated everything behind this millions people of movement. But they didn't succeed. The judgment, if you look at it, none of it is about really seditious or none of it is about him colluding with foreign forces. He's only criminalized because he talked to foreign politicians and publishing critical articles that perhaps hold pro-democracy views that are opposites of what Beijing wants, and that threatens Beijing. So I think for many people of Hong Kong, they know this verdict comes, they know what is the result of it. But this is finally, after five years of hanging on, finally we have a result. And I think many people now wonder how long this sentence will be for Jimmy Lai. And people are concerned because of his health and his age. Yes. Thank you for that, Frances. Now, as mentioned, the British foreign secretary strongly condemned this conviction and said this was politically motivated. So what can the international community do to pressure the CCP to release Lai? Well, I think in the US particularly, we just hope that members of Congress can continue to raise his profile, but also fast track many of the Hong Kong related legislation, including looking into the HKETO locations in the US, looking into their special privileges in the US, and a lot of other things like imposing sanctions on judges and officials that are involved in this whole prosecution. I think the UK can follow that approach as well, especially with a trip coming up to Beijing. I know the prime minister has a planned trip to Beijing. Condition Jimmy Lai released as the condition for that trip to continue to happen. I think many things we can do as an international community to support Jimmy Lai and other political prisoner in this very critical moment where we're now in the very critical window between the verdict and the sentencing. And we just hope that during this time in this one month period, we can have as much voice as we can and pressure the Chinese government to, again, immediately release Jimmy Lai unconditionally. I hear you. For a little bit of context, Lai was arrested over five years ago and has been in prison for over 1800 days, most of that in solitary confinement. He's 78 years old and he has diabetes and his son said he could actually see Lai's condition worsen with significant weight loss and frailty. Why do you think the CCP has gone to such lengths to target Lai in such a public fashion? Well, they need an icon to, they need someone there to show that no one can hold opposition voice. You can run a business in Hong Kong, you can have a newspaper in Hong Kong, but you can't do anything like what Jimmy Lai do. I think Beijing is scared of Jimmy Lai because he is rich and he has the connection and he has a great story to tell, which resonates with many people abroad. Frances Hui, thank you for shedding light on this. That's all for today's China In Focus. I'm Kevin Hogan. If you have any feedback on the show or have something you'd like to see us cover, send us an email at ChinaInFocus at NTD.com. And for round-the-clock original news coverage, visit us at NTD.com or download our NTD app. Thanks for watching. See you soon.